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FCC To Suspend Most Operations Thursday if the Partial Government Shutdown Continues (fcc.gov)
The Federal Communications Commission will suspend most operations in the middle of the day January 3 if the partial government shutdown continues, the agency has announced [PDF]. In a statement, it said: In the event of a continued partial lapse in federal government funding, the Federal Communications Commission will suspend most operations in the middle of the day on Thursday, January 3. At that time, employees will have up to four hours to complete an orderly shutdown of operations. However, work required for the protection of life and property will continue, as will any work related to spectrum auctions, which is funded by auction proceeds. In addition, the Office of the Inspector General will continue operations until further notice. The Commission on Wednesday will release a Public Notice detailing the effects the suspension of operations will have, including on electronic filing and database systems, filing deadlines, regulatory and application fee payments, transaction shot clocks, and more. The Public Notice will be available on the Commission's website, www.fcc.gov.
Look at those list of qualifications for the things that are not really shut down.
Basically "anything that is really at all useful carries on".
That's just for the FCC but the general trend carries across the whole government.
For just one example - you can still update passports... and most national parks are still open.
I think this shutdown may last a while, because I 'm not sure there's much pain that most non-government people will see...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Firing up my pirate transmitter. Tune into 6925KHz.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Why should they? Donald Trump said Mexico would pay for it.
But "useful" is a matter of degree and timing. For example, Federal permits are often required for various business activities. Many of those are being postponed, meaning businesses have to wait. It can muck up schedules, hurting profits.
I'm sure you have a personal "to do" list, and many of those items can be postponed some without much problem, but after a while it will catch up to you and cause direct problems.
But toiletry and garbage-related maintenance is on hold. I shouldn't have to explain the details of those downsides.
It's stupid that our system allows this so easily. It should have a cruise control mode that funds at existing levels until budget agreements are made. Stop throwing monkey wrenches into our civilization; I LIKE civilization. It seems many don't. Let's not #MakeCavesGreatAgain.
Table-ized A.I.
Haven't you heard? Mexico is already paying for the wall. They're just doing it with money taken out of US taxpayers' pockets.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Oh, traditional communism. How about that. But how long can we expect them to keep that up?
Like I said, consequence is relative and time-related. Just because you can postpone something doesn't mean it has no consequence. I can postpone dental visits for a year or so, but if I never went to a dentist, I'd probably have screwy or missing teeth. (Then again, some rural people seem to view such as a badge of honor for reasons that escape me.)
Whether the gov't is too big or too small in general is probably another debate for another time. Let's try to focus on specifics here. And nobody agrees on what parts are too big. The military is too is big by some accounts, I would note.
Table-ized A.I.
Just fund the wall that Americans want and need.
Sigh. Anonymous Coward - Over and over and over and over and OVER again, Trump made it clear that MEXICO was going to pay for the wall. He made it clear that his fantastic negotiating skills will make that a reality.
All we're doing is holding him to his promise.
A promise *every* Trump supporter repeated back to me throughout 2016 and a lot of 2017.
Is that so hard? All he has to do is do what he said: Head to Mexico, and return with a check for $40 Billion dollars for the wall.
... I just can't bring myself to be upset about the shutdown ...
Perhaps if the shutdown involved Congress and the White House -- after all, they actually haven't done anything productive. But regular people, just trying to do their jobs and pay their bills, are now caught up in this -- over partial funding for wall almost no one wants (or cares about) and DHS says we don't actually need. Even Trump tweeted, on Dec 20, 2018 (last fucking week), that the Border is currently "tight":
With so much talk about the Wall, people are losing sight of the great job being done on our Southern Border by Border Patrol, ICE and our great Military. Remember the Caravans? Well, they didn’t get through and none are forming or on their way. Border is tight. Fake News silent!
And, contrary to what he might think (and I use that word generously), the military really had/has nothing to do with this.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Largely because they're using funds left over. The Smithsonian, for instance, will close on the 2nd or 3rd of Jan IIRC because of lack of funds. I imagine the national parks will close as well.
All the outdoor parks and memorials will remain open because there's no need to close them. Trees keep growing, rivers keep flowing...
Just wait. All those school trips to the Smithsonian will start kicking in sometime after the holiday break, and you'll see stories of disappointed kids in the news.
Disappointed children from the richest counties in the nation is press that helps Trump though, so it will quickly die off.
The best possible scenario here is for Trump to do zip, he gets massive bad press
And here is where you discover exactly why it's super bad to have journalists deliver massive bad press on a subject 24x7 - because when the subject does deserve it, absolutely no-one pays attention or cares.
both parties come together to over-ride his veto.
That is actually what Trump is hoping for and would assure him a 20/20 victory. Funny how many people that hate Trump so badly, seem to take steps to ensure him achieving whatever victory he desires...
If they had just quietly paid for the wall they could have plastered him with the failure of it in 2020. Here's a big 'ol tactical clue for Democrats: Half-assed wall is way better for the Democrats than zero wall. Trump has got more benefit out of a fictional wall than Pink Floyd!
Some people claim that True is playing eight-dimensional chess. I think he's just an average guy who managed to work his way into the kingdom of the sub-level morons.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why are the executive branch and congress still receiving full pay and benefits?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
As an amateur radio licensee, this kind of pisses me off because this will cause a huge back log of new licensee applications and new hams will have to wait longer for their call sign. To me, communications are critical. The Federal Bureaucracy is so bloated, surely there is an agency that is much lower down the food chain that would not be so mission critical.
Nope. I aint payin for some bullshit metal slats in the middle of the fucking desert. Fuck that. No, FUCK that.
No money from Mexico, no wall. That was the promise, which has now been exposed as just another lie from trump to his brain dead supporters.
Keep it closed until he leaves office or gets impeached for all I care. trumptards can suck on this one. It's their own fault for voting for loser trump.
trump's administration is so corrupt and ineffectual that the government might as well be closed anyway.
Even if Mexico *were* to pay for it, the Trump Administration would need authorization from Congress because that's how the Constitution works. If Trump finds 5 billion bucks in the White House sofa cushions he couldn't just spend it; it'd have to go into the treasury and await appropriation, just like taxpayer money.
In every democracy I know of the legislature passes an annual budget which sets spending limits and priorities. It then creates authorizing legislation that creates or continues programs which spend the money. Finally it passes some kind of appropriation legislation which allows the money to actually be spent. Appropriation is the final step that allows the legislature to tweak exactly where the budgeted money goes.
In most countries failure to pass an appropriation bill requires the government to resign and call general elections, so it seldom happens. In the US this is not the case, but until around 1980, appropriations bills never failed. After 1980 frequency of appropriations bill failures have gradually increased, but the issues have always been things like tax increases or disagreements over whether budgeted and authorized spending should actually go forth.
This is the first government shutdown in US history where the objective was to spend money that was never budgeted.
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Seems to me a perfectly workable compromise could exist here. Trump could agree to no additional funding for the wall, while the Democrats could agree to redirect all social services spending (i.e. food stamps, housing assistance, education funding, medical assistance, etc.) currently being spent on people here illegally, being spent instead on building a wall and repatriating those not here lawfully.
It may be lack of democracy and free speech. Totalitarians treat citizens as expendable pawns because they can; they won't be voted out. Besides, I said "traditional communism", not Soviet-style.
You are focusing on one narrow aspect of the military. Further, it's not so much there's a withdrawal, it's that the administration has not laid out plans for what to do if say ISIS or Taliban raise up again. If their plan is "just live with them", at least say so openly and honestly. They didn't ask for feedback from allies and citizens, and had no public discussion on such points.
Table-ized A.I.
Polls are BS. We had an election
And the election proved that polls are BS
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Fentanyl doses are measured in micrograms. The street price of fentanyl amounts to about $1600 per gram. If you wanted to smuggle a million dollars of fentanyl past the wall you could just hand it through one of the fence slats or toss it over the wall. Or hide it in one of the millions of tons of cargo that are shipped into the US.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This is your big chance, everyone. With the freakin' FCC out of action for a bit, you can finally do stuff like; you no longer have to tinkle; you can finally take a piss. Fellatio no longer must be called a trouser friendly kiss...
etc, etc...
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Fact check: Only partway through his campaign did he mention that Mexico would fund it. That wasn't an initial campaign promise only the "wall" was. That... after the liberal left demanded to know where the funding would come from and forced him to find an answer that wouldn't immediately impact the taxpayers.
Asking how you intend to pay for your signature campaign promise.
A classic gotcha question.
I stole this Sig
Trump could agree to no additional funding for the wall, while the Democrats could agree to redirect all social services spending (i.e. food stamps, housing assistance, education funding, medical assistance, etc.) currently being spent on people here illegally, being spent instead on building a wall and repatriating those not here lawfully.
Illegal aliens don't get foodstamps or housing assistance. The only medical care they can get is Medicaid for pregnant women giving birth in the US.
Education is paid for by local taxes (usually property and sales) which illegal immigrants pay almost always. And anyway the US has to provide secondary education to everybody.
A milk jug full of pure fentanyl is enough to give a hit to every junkie in the US. That's how powerful it is.
Theoretically illegal aliens aren't supposed to be able to apply on their own, but in fact about 60% do receive public assistance.
Only immigrants with children born in the US (i.e. the US citizen) can receive public assistance. I would like to see the source for the 60% figure, that doesn't seem to be correct.
Certain states with a lot of illegal immigrants, which are known for being liberal and flouting federal law regarding immigration and drugs, go ahead and hand out the money.
That's up to states, they can't dole out federal money to illegals.
The six dependents don't have to be legal.
That's not how welfare works (SNAP, EITC or TANF). You can't claim welfare for dependents who are not the US citizen and there's also a 5-year ban. The exception I think is WIC which does give benefits to the mother of the US citizen. Here's an overview: https://aspe.hhs.gov/basic-rep...
My background: I'm a legal immigrant and I actually researched that stuff before immigration, in case I needed it.
Here's food for thought:
It took the Nazis 10 years to round up and murder 6-8 million people. They had the full force of the Gestapo and local police to enforce their will. They didn't have to bother with courts or any such rule of law nonsense.They also had the help of government records, in both Germany and in the lands they conquered/annexed. And yet it still took them 10 years.
What you are proposing eclipses that in scope of people and area. So good luck, you will need to turn American into the Fourth Reich to achieve it and it will still take you over a decade.
and I actually researched that stuff
What are you doing here then? Slashdot is not a forum for informed and factually correct discourse.
Wait what.... you're an immigrant. Deport him, #MAGA!
*note the incredible amount of both sarcasm and disappointment in my post.
Hillary Clinton's Titty?
And when the EPA hasn't approved some process or equipment as complying, does the company shut down or run without approval (and thus be violating regulations). I suppose some can use old stuff. But yeah, I imagine a lot of companies will take advantage of this window to handle any disposal issues that they were stockpiling.
Did you even read your link? Yes, the applications that were started in 2018 for new drugs are being continued if there's enough money left in their dedicated accounts. No new drugs approvals are even being considered as of Jan 1 2019, and the companies that started approvals in 2018 cannot add more money to those dedicated accounts in 2019 to finish it.
Did you even read your link? It's talking about SSD, which while a component of SS is pretty small. It's talking about how hearings cannot be scheduled. And yes, paperwork is still being processed. However they cannot do the benefits validation until they're back. Which is a vital part to actually getting checks.
Yes, the mail service is still working. Yes the government didn't destroy all forms. But you cannot go to a passport office to get a passport. While some things can happen by mail, not all.
Got it, you don't think they should shut down the parks. I mean, they will, because they do every shutdown. But this is just a "why". It's not happening yet cause there's still a little cash left in those accounts.
But yes, mothballing things does cost money. Government shutdowns tend to cost more than just keeping the government running, and they also don't produce the services we expect from government.
Your ad here. Ask me how!